Caribbean & Central America - March 2006 (ISSN 1741-4458)

Haiti's president-elect René Préval will not be sworn in as scheduled on 29 March. The reason for the postponement is that the provisional electoral council (CEP) has been unable to deal with all the complaints from the first round of the legislative elections in time for the second-round run-off for the senate and lower chamber seats to be held on 19 March. If there is no legislature in place, there will be no-one to take Préval's oath.

The president of the nine-member CEP, Max Mathurin, said that the run-off, which will pit the two leading candidates for each of 30 senate seats and 99 lower chamber seats against one another, would have to be postponed until 23 April because complaints were only just being processed.

Allegations of fraud also surrounded the presidential elections on 7 February which were eventually awarded to Préval after some skilful, if legally questionable, arithmetic pushed him over the 50% plus one threshold required to win in the first round. Préval might have to wait until May to take office unless another ingenious compromise is reached.

In the meantime Préval has a hectic foreign agenda. He visited Brasí­lia on 10 March to meet Brazil's President Lula da Silva before moving on to Santiago, where he attended the investiture of Chile's president-elect Michelle Bachelet.

He will visit the US on 27 and 28 March when he will meet US President George W Bush and officials from the Organization of American States, World Bank and IMF. He will also visit the UN. He is expected to cram in a visit to Venezuela to meet President Hugo Chávez too.

What now for Aristide?

Préval took his time before addressing the press for the first time after he was proclaimed winner. He might have been preparing his response to the question he knew he would face: "What do you intend to do about former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide?"

When the question came, he was ready. "My position is simple on President Aristide and any other citizen who wants to come to Haiti. Article 41 of the Haitian constitution says that no Haitian needs a visa to enter or leave the country," Préval said. This response enabled him to avoid saying whether he would welcome Aristide home, still less whether Aristide would play a part in his future government.

The US has made it clear that it would prefer Aristide not to return. The spokesman for the State Department, Adam Ereli, said that the US did not consider Aristide's return a good thing as it would serve no purpose. "Aristide is from the past, we're looking to the future," Ereli said.

Aristide, speaking from his exile in South Africa, has made his intention to return very clear. "I have the right to be back. My determination is to be back in education, serving the people; not as a member of the public service but as a citizen. I am confident I can serve my country without being involved as president," he said.

Aristide also hinted that Préval would not be taking office if it were not for his close association with him in the past. He said: "The people voted the way they did because they wanted me back."